Linke Wienzeile Buildings

As Vienna was expanding rapidly around its edges, in 1893 Wagner proposed a project creating a new channel for the Wien river, a tributary of the Danube, and a grand boulevard with new buildings to line it.

[1] Wagner was very critical of the historicism of the buildings which lined the Ringstrasse, the famous circular main boulevard of Vienna, which he termed a "stylistic masked ball".

Its facade is entirely covered with majolica, or colorful glazed earthenware tiles in the floral designs which characterized the early Vienna Secession.

He provided sculpture for other Vienna Secession landmarks including the three gorgons on the 1898 Secession Building by Joseph Maria Olbrich, and for two other famous buildings by Hoffmann; the Kirche am Steinhof church in Vienna, and the rooftop sculpture of angels the Austrian Postal Savings Bank.

[4] Both buildings also feature very ornate wrought-iron decoration on the balconies and in the elevator cages and stairways in the interior, in keeping with the early Secession style.